The Portable Bunyan
eBook - PDF

The Portable Bunyan

A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Portable Bunyan

A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress

About this book

How does a book become an international bestseller? What happens to it as it is translated into different languages, contexts, and societies? How is it changed by the intellectual environments it encounters? What does the transnational circulation mean for its reception back home? Exploring the international life of a particularly long-lived and widely traveled book, Isabel Hofmeyr follows The Pilgrim's Progress as it circulates through multiple contexts--and into some 200 languages--focusing on Africa, where 80 of the translations occurred.


This feat of literary history is based on intensive research that criss-crossed among London, Georgia, Kingston, Bedford (John Bunyan's hometown), and much of sub-Saharan Africa. Finely written and unusually wide-ranging, it accounts for how The Pilgrim's Progress traveled abroad with the Protestant mission movement, was adapted and reworked by the societies into which it traveled, and, finally, how its circulation throughout the empire affected Bunyan's standing back in England.


The result is a new intellectual approach to Bunyan--one that weaves together British, African, and Caribbean history with literary and translation studies and debates over African Christianity and mission. Even more important, this book is a rare example of a truly worldly study of "world literature"--and of the critical importance of translation, both linguistic and cultural.

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Yes, you can access The Portable Bunyan by Isabel Hofmeyr in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. CONTENTS
  5. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
  8. PROLOGUE
  9. INTRODUCTION: Portable Texts: Bunyan, Translation, and Transnationality
  10. PART ONE: BUNYAN IN THE PROTESTANT ATLANTIC
  11. PART TWO: BUNYAN, THE PUBLIC SPHERE, AND AFRICA
  12. PART THREE: POST-BUNYAN
  13. CONCLUSION: Lifting the Tollgates
  14. APPENDIX 1 Bunyan Translations by Language
  15. APPENDIX 2 A Social Profile of Bunyan Translators
  16. NOTES
  17. BIBLIOGRAPHY
  18. INDEX